President's Weekly Update
22 May 2014
We held a celebration to mark the award of a Queen’s Anniversary Prize for X-Ray imaging of materials. We learnt of the award last November, and a small group of staff and PhD students received the award at a fantastic event at Buckingham Palace. At this week’s occasion, we celebrated with many more staff and students, our founders, Board and General Assembly members, external partners, funders and civic representatives.
Presentations were given by Professor Colin Bailey (Vice-President and Dean of Engineering and Physical Sciences), who led the bid, Professor Phil Withers (Director of our BP International Centre for Advanced Materials), who heads the Henry Moseley X-Ray Imaging Facility at the University and Professor Peter Lee (Professor of Materials Imaging), who heads the University’s facility at Diamond, Harwell. The presentations were remarkable in demonstrating the incredible breadth of our imaging work. I summed it up as spanning from the incredibly tiny to huge, from art history to aircraft, from curiosity driven discovery to applications of real benefit and from ancient history to barely imaginable futures.
I hosted a dinner for senior staff from across the University who are closely involved in social responsibility, with Professor Colin Hughes, Associate Vice-President for Sustainability, Professor Aneez Esmail, Associate Vice-President for Social Responsibility and Julian Skyrme, Director for Social Responsibility. We discussed why social responsibility is important, how we focus our efforts -particularly when we have limited time and resources, how we communicate what we are doing, assess outcomes and impact and how we can better coordinate our activities across the University between Faculties and between academic and Professional Support Services staff. We even had a discussion about how we might better structure the University to address the social responsibility agenda!
I met the President of Nanjing Medical University in China, his colleagues and senior staff from the Chinese Consulate in Manchester. They were visiting to discuss partnerships in teaching and research with the University, particularly with Life Sciences. Professor Martin Humphries (Vice-President and Dean of Life Sciences) hosted the visit with Dr Xin ‘Joy’ Wang (Senior Lecturer in FLS) and we took them to see a few of the historic buildings at the University, including the Rutherford Building and the place where Alan Turing worked.
I was filmed talking about the importance of our heritage as part of a project led by Dr James Hopkins, the University Historian. The purpose of the project is to demonstrate how our founders, funders and history for over 190 years have driven our values as encapsulated in our motto ‘Cognitio, Sapientia, Humanitas’ - Knowledge, Wisdom, Humanity.
I gave the inaugural Athena Swan lecture at The University of Lancaster on my career, some of our research, women in science and a little on being a Vice-Chancellor - all in 40 minutes, followed by a lot of questions.
This week was busy with further budget meetings as we move towards the final stages of planning and budget setting for the next financial year.
I attended the Council of the Royal Society in London and my last Annual General Meeting as President of the Society of Biology. To mark the end of my presidency, the Society has set up a competition in partnership with the Royal Veterinary College for schoolchildren to submit drawings of biological specimens. This is to recognise my interest in art as well as science! You can find out more at:
At a Society of Biology dinner the same evening I was delighted to receive presents including a day on a racing car track and the original menu from the first dinner of the Society at the Royal Society which was signed by everyone present including Sir Paul Nurse, now President of the Royal Society and Sir David Attenborough, who both spoke at the launch.
I made one of my shortest trips ever to London – I’d planned to attend an hour long meeting at the Department for Business Innovation and Skills with ministers for business, universities and skills - but a severe delay on my train meant I was there for just 15 minutes, then travelled back again. Train journeys are at least good for catching up on work and reading.
Nancy Rothwell, President and Vice-Chancellor
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